Rentables' New Homepage

Over the weekend we rolled out a bunch of updates including our new home page.  Check it out and let us know what you think: Rentables.com.

Don't have an account? Sign up today for a no hassle free trial and see how Rentables can streamline and organize your property management business.

Could we be doing something better? Let us know at feedback@rentables.com

Features and Updates for April

How many open work orders do you have?  Have you ever forget a work order?  Now you can easily track your works orders with Rentables.  Know in an instant who requested it, who approved it, which vendor, how much, and when was it finished.  Plus you can attached the estimate, invoice, or pictures if you lie.

• Work Orders - streamline your work order management
• Contact Logs - log your conversations with owners, tenants, and vendor and have them all at your finger tips for future reference

Could we be doing something better? Let us know.

Trust Fund Handling

Real estate commissioners in many states are really cracking down on how property managers handle trust funds.  For example, in Texas the TREC's latest newsletter has the entire first page dedicate to trust account issues.

A broker who manages property for clients, who accepts a security deposit, or who collects rent or disburses money, is required to maintain a trust account for that money...the broker is responsible for properly handling money deposited into a trust account...

In California, the Bureau of Real Estate reported 34 trust fund handling related enforcement actions in February alone.  We try to make it as easy as possible for you to be compliant.  Try Rentables for Free and see just how easy it can be to keep your trust account balanced and reconciled.

Could we be doing something better? Let us know

Features and Updates for March

This month we have some really exciting new features including Payment Advances.  Do you ever pay your owners even though rent is late?  If you're holding the tenant's security deposit then with Payment Advances you can advance the owner their monthly proceeds against the receivable rent.  The rent charge will still show up as unpaid and Rentables will automatically settle the advance when rent is actually received.  Of course, you can still explicitly pay rent from the tenant's security deposit if you prefer.

• Payment Advances - streamlined accounting for advancing owner proceeds

• Inactive List - mark properties as inactive and unclutter your views
• Late Fee Calculator - auto calculate late fees as a percentage of rent
• Rent Email Reminders - automatically send tenants reminders that rent is due (contact support@rentables.com to have this feature enabled)
• Updated Rents Worksheet - our handy offline worksheet for tracking money received and owner proceeds paid just got better (Reports → Rents Worksheet)

Could we be doing something better? Let us know.

Are you just getting started in Property Management? The California Bureau of Real Estate offers this advice on opening your Trust Account:

A real estate broker should take the following steps when requesting that a trust account be opened:

1. Ask to open a business checking account. 
2. Verify or confirm that the account has federal insurance coverage (FDIC, NCUSIF, etc.). 
3. Ask to have the account opened and captioned/titled as a “trust” account in your name, registered fictitious name or corporate broker name, with the broker designated “as trustee” in the title or on the broker/designated officer signature line. 
4. No separate or special trust agreement is required. The depository will ask for additional documentation to verify your identity, business certificates, Articles of Incorporation, etc.

Read the whole article here: http://www.bre.ca.gov/files/pdf/OpeningTrustAccount.pdf

Rentables makes it easy for you to maintain accurate records for your trust account. Whether you are just getting start with a couple properties or manage 500, Rentables® is built for your business.

New Features and Updates for January

Rentables is pleased to announce the roll out of several new features and improvements this month.  The most requested has been to have your Company name prominently displayed on Owner statements.  Checkout our newly revamped and easier to understand Owner Statements and all the other improvements this month:

• New Owner Statement - our new statement layout is clean and easy for Owner's to understand.
• Property Type - you can now classify each unit as a Condo, House, Townhome, etc.
• Salutations - be a little more formal with you customers or jog your memory by adding a salutation to your contacts.
• Owner Statement Archive - do you want a copy of every statement Rentables sends to your owners?  Contact your sells rep and ask for Aggregated Owner Statements and we'll email you a link to download all the statements sent the previous day as one PDF.
• Improved Sorting - with our improved parsing and sorting you'll find your properties and contacts are sorted in a more intuitive order.
• Faster Page Loading - we know some pages are slow to load.  That's why we spent some time speeding up the pages you visit the most.
• Search Box - The search box is everywhere but wasn't performing up to par.  We've revamp the code behind the search box to give you more consistent results across browsers and platforms (download Chrome).
• Business Bank Accounts - based on your feedback that some Owners use business bank accounts rather than personal checking accounts, you can now add business accounts for ACH disbursements.
• Streamlined Compliance - many real estate departments require Property Managers to keep ledgers for each owner, property, and lease (which Rentables already makes easy).  Now you can also record the date an item was transmitted or deposited (in addition, to the date it clears) with one simple click.

Could we be doing something better? Let us know.